Crete: The Battle and the Resistance Read Free Page A

and rigorous thought who a few years later in the rank of full colonel played a large part with Nick Hammond in thwarting the Greek Communists' attempt to suppress rival guerrilla groups; Michael Forrester, who was soon to distinguish himself in Crete as an almost mythical leader of irregulars in the battle against German paratroopers; and Patrick Leigh Fermor, described as 'an avatar of Byron' by Woodhouse because he had attached himself to a Greek cavalry regiment during the Venizelist revolution of 1935, and who later gave substance to the label with guerrilla adventures that were amongst the most romantic of the war.
    Leigh Fermor's early career of itinerant delight has been well-chronicled in his books, yet en route to Athens his power of charmed survival almost failed. Coming from Alexandria, the cruiser HMS Ajax stopped off at Suda Bay on the north coast of Crete. He and Monty Woodhouse went into the old Venetian city of Canea for a drink and to smoke a narghile.
    Afterwards, a private in the Black Watch driving a ration lorry stopped to give them a lift back to Suda, but he proved to be drunk and drove without care on roads which had 'gone artistically to ruin', in Pendlebury's phrase. The truck overturned in the ditch and Leigh Fermor, who received a head wound, had to be left behind in hospital when the Ajax sailed. He finally reached Athens a week later.
    The mission's liaison officer with the Greek government was Prince Peter of Greece, King George II's young cousin and an anthropologist who had spent a long time in the Himalayas. As a thoroughgoing Anglophile, with 'an astonishing repertoire of bawdy songs', he was greatly liked by British officers.
    The mission was hardly in a position to proffer useful advice on mountain warfare. 'The Greeks were certainly brave,' observed one war correspondent, 'but mountain warfare was in their view not suited to modern methods, and they reverted almost automatically to the tactics of a century ago.' Forrester, who worked for Salisbury-Jones, described the conflict as 'like one of the Balkan wars with somewhat updated weapons.'
    The nebulous task of the British Military Mission was not made clearer by the unreal environment in which it lived and worked. Immediately after the Italian invasion, the Greek government had requisitioned the Hotel Grande Bretagne on Constitution Square as its General Headquarters: it was one of the largest buildings in Athens and had extensive cellars ready to serve as air-raid shelters.
    General Metaxas took over the manager's office, the King was allotted a private drawing-room, and the reputation of 'Jimmy', the barman, as the best informed man in Athens increased still further when General Mellisinos, the Deputy Chief of Staff, set up his desk opposite the rows of bottles.
    'The prize show of the building', wrote Colonel Blunt in his diary, 'was Maniadakis, the public security chief. He had a huge mahogany table matching his vast bulk. On it was an outsize photograph of General Metaxas in a massive silver frame, and a battery of telephones that would not have disgraced the office of any police chief of thriller fiction or film. Maniadakis would seize a telephone receiver in his huge fist and bellow for some distant provincial prefect or police chief, shouting not only to drown the typewriters, but also because he liked to shout. While this performance was going on, all his intimate circle of officers and friends who were clustered and seated round him, would hang on his words and try to hear what was coming through from the other end.'

    During the Greek army's astonishingly successful campaign against the Italians, the Joint Planning Staff and the Chiefs of Staff in London did not want British aid to go beyond the fighter and bomber squadrons already committed. One way of helping both the Greeks and British interests in the Eastern Mediterranean was to take over responsibility for Crete, which the Italians wanted to occupy as a naval and air